We help our clients achieve measurable results through elevating team performance, applying behavioral analytics, benchmarking talent and developing leaders.
We are all certified in the Predictive Index and are part of a global community of management consultants who specialize in helping companies reach their goals. Our team is battle-tested from executive level career tenure in a variety of industries – so we’ve lived it and we get it.
MShaffer@talentsuitellc.com
214.734.6665
Melanie Shaffer is an expert in diagnosing talent related pain points that keep organizations from achieving their highest potential and designing solutions to impact results. She marries data with proven methodologies to provide leaders clarity on how to work with their employees in creating high performance teams. Melanie has served hundreds of clients over the span of her career in talent management, business ownership and executive recruiting.
She consistently ranked in the top 5% of recruiters in a $1 billion, publicly held recruiting firm before moving to a Managing Partner role in the CFO Suite where she was a two-time winner for the SMU Cox Dallas 100 fastest growing companies award. In 2018, she founded TalentSuite, LLC, with a mission to build stronger, more productive workplaces and people by teaching companies how to align their people strategy with their business strategy.
Melanie is in the Dallas Business Journal Leadership Trust, an elite group of CEOs that contribute thought leadership. She is an engaging speaker and facilitator that focuses on interactive sessions with tangible strategies to deploy.
Melanie is a graduate from the University of Oklahoma and is a Talent Optimization Certified Consultant, a Predictive Index Certified Partner, a Vistage Top New Speaker Award recipient and a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach.
KRao@talentsuitellc.com
214.734.6665
In addition to her recruiting and talent management experience, Kelly brings over 20 years of extensive marketing, strategy and business development experience, having been a marketing executive previously with The Container Store. During her tenure there, she worked as part of the leadership team building the company from early stage to the iconic brand it is today.
Kelly naturally employs a customer success approach to business and has a keen ability to think like the consumer. She has a built a career in uncovering what motivates and drives people and embodies Talent Suite’s mission of building stronger more productive workplaces.
Kelly is a valued business partner to our clients helping them engage, develop and retain top talent to gain competitive advantage and fuel company growth. Her unique blend of experience allows her to work with Executives through many lenses, adapting to the needs of each client individually.
Kelly is a graduate of Wellesley College, and is a Talent Optimization Certified Consultant and a Predictive Index Certified Partner.
SPailet@talentsuitellc.com
214.734.6665
Summer Pailet has a genuine passion for people and connection, a self-professed Soulpreneur, someone who chooses to rise up and work their light in a soul-driven career or business and in 2019 Summer founded the SoulPreneurs Consortium. Valuing the potential in everyone, her innate skills of relationship-building and insightful communication consistently retains loyal clients year after year. She has a background in psychology and fashion merchandising from the University of Texas-Austin, understanding success is from the inside out and outside in, a holistic approach. Summer is considered a thought leader to all of the organizations and their people that she touches.
Summer’s has a wealth of experience in professional presence, branding, strengths building, and effective communication in many industries that include, Healthcare & Pharma, Technology, Architecture, Financial Services, Shipping & Transportation, Hospitality, Auto, Cosmetics, Apparel & Footwear, Construction and other Retail Consumer Goods. She facilitates and coaches with contagious enthusiasm and energy. Her commitment to supporting the personal and professional growth of others is with boundless energy.
Summer is a recipient of the Teacher’s Excellence Award from SMU BLC Cox School ofBusiness for her Personal Brand Impact program in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019.
Bringing social awareness and impact to her community and beyond is a ‘must’, serving as aBoard Member to a non-profit organization supporting Israel as well as, a member of IsraelBonds Dallas Women’s Leadership Council.
Carrie LongEXECUTIVE TRAINER214.868.7942
Carrie Long has followed her passion for education throughout her entire life and brings over 20 years of leadership experience to Talent Suite. She spent the bulk of her career at Kaplan, Inc. working to create and deliver engaging and effective educational programs to a wide range of students. From K12 to professional licensure, Carrie has a long history of developing deep relationships, building and scaling best-in-market strategies, and coaching teams to success.
In 2019, Carrie shifted her focus to executive leadership development. As a coach and mentor, she listens with intent to understand in order to really get to the heart of matter at hand. With this strategy in mind, Carrie has provided guidance in a number of key areas, such as organizational development, succession planning and culture creation.
Carrie has a Communications degree from Texas Tech University and has been honing her skills ever since. She spends her free time with her family and volunteering with community organizations such as Network of Community Ministries, Ronald McDonald House and Austin Street Shelter.
Marisol RiddellEXECUTIVE TRAINER904.718.2820
Marisol comes to Talent Suite with a B.S. in Economics and a M.Sc. in Statistics and Data Science from the University of Houston. Customer facing for most of her career, she pivoted to the sciences after having worked in hospice and technical recruiting. Her experience working with the Federal Reserve and as an Analyst for IHS Markit helps her maintain a boots on ground comfort level with current economic trends and the importance of utilizing behavioral analytics to develop teams that perform at high levels.
Though Marisol loves working in data, she missed the face forward world of facilitation and was thrilled to discover the intersection of actionable data and talent optimization offered by Talent Suite.
Marisol thrives best when helping others identify opportunity and potential. Nothing makes her smile faster than discovering areas for improvement, and maximizing output. When she isn’t busy guiding companies towards profitable business goals, you can find her reading in a cozy nook or cheering on her daughter’s athletic endeavors as an American Ninja Warrior.
267.615.1239
Katrina VanCleve is an experienced operations and administrative professional, bringing years of skill and history from supporting C-level teams. Driven by a passion to serve others, she takes pride in providing her team with the best operations and administrative expertise, and ensuring clients have the most positive experiences.
Her proven success in increasing productivity, innovating processes and implementing systems has helped teams grow and achieve goals year over year. She has supported teams in the medical, marketing, IT, legal, finance and management consulting industries. Katrina’s passion is to help other professionals build remote work careers such as hers, and she has served as a resource to dozens of professionals seeking support in the virtual work industry.
Katrina is a graduate of Vassar College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and a minor in Philosophy.
blawson@talentsuitellc.com
214.734.6665
Brett is an Advisory Board Member for Talent Suite and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of The CFO Suite. Previously, Brett was a founding partner of The Controller Group (“TCG”).
Under Brett’s strategic and operational leadership, TCG and The CFO Suite have each been honored as two-time winners in the Dallas 100TM. TCG successfully merged with Tatum, LLC in 2006 where Brett played an integral role in developing a national presence for the consulting practice.
Brett began his career with Ernst & Young gaining a broad range of experience within the Entrepreneurial Services Assurance practice in the UK and Dallas office. During this time, he was also a member of the National Training Team responsible for the creation and instruction of many E&Y education programs.
Brett graduated from the University of Warwick in the UK and is a Chartered Accountant. He currently serves on the advisory board for Civitas Capital Management, LLC, a specialty financial services and investment management company and is an active angel investor in many Texas based startups. He is also active in various philanthropic organizations including the North Texas Food Bank.
Marie is an ICF Coach and Leadership Consultant with more than 40 years in management and leadership. Her professional career includes multiple leadership roles at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) where she began her career as a Systems Engineer. During her final assignment at EDS she was responsible for the concept, design and implementation of the Talent Management portion within the end-to-end Human Resources Outsourcing solution at ExcellerateHRO. This joint venture between EDS and Towers Perrin was based on best practice Human Resources and led the industry in self serve Human Resources.
In 2022, Marie retired as the Director of Corporate Education in the Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas where she had been for ten years. In her role she partnered with corporations to identify leadership gaps and design interactive, engaging learning experiences to close the leadership gaps. Many of the solutions were comprehensive leadership development journeys that included in-person and virtual learning experiences for multiple levels of leadership. When possible, surround strategies included individual and group coaching.
Marie is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin. Her thirst for learning, combined with her professional experience and ability to recognize talent in others, provides the right recipe for successful design of impactful leadership development solutions. She regularly gives to the community through volunteer service with the Junior League.
It’s important to remember that the whole person shows up at work.
When you think about evaluating someone to determine where they will be most effective in an organization, leaders and hiring managers are very quick to look at the knowledge, skills and experience someone brings to the job. This model represents that as the briefcase. We typically look at someone’s resume to find out about these things, and we dig a bit further in an in-person interview. The briefcase changes over time based upon what skills and experience a person gains.
The heart represents things like values and interests that someone has. What are they passionate about? Will they be a good fit for our company culture? The heart is fluid because it is impacted by things that change over the course of a person’s life and career. Organizations may or may not spend time understanding the heart in interviews or throughout their career.
The head represents a person’s innate drives and cognitive abilities. These things tend to remain stable once someone matures. Your behavioral drives and the rate at which you learn new things stay constant. And this is where The Predictive Index can provide data to help you evaluate these critical aspects of a person.
You can find out about those things using two assessments offered by The Predictive Index. The PI Behavioral Assessment measures behavioral drives, and the PI Cognitive Assessment measures cognitive ability. The combination of the two provides valuable data and insight that can help to predict someone’s behavior. When used together, these two assessments are powerful indicators of job success – in fact, research shows that the combination of the two increases predictability of success in role by more than 60%.[/modal_popup_box]
“Our team is battle‑tested from executive level career tenure in a variety of industries – so we’ve lived it and we get it.”
